Michael Hogan reviews part two of the X Factor final.

It’s over at last and we have a winner. What’s seemed like an interminable series of The X Factor Final (ITV1) ended with an interminable episode, but at least the right contestant came out on top. James Arthur, the stoop-shouldered, self-effacing former busker from Middlesbrough, became the singing contest’s ninth champion. Will he usher in a new era of credible contestants or merely be the new Matt Cardle? We’ll find out in the coming months.

This was the second leg of the final, with just two crooners left standing: Arthur and clean-cut Swindon supermarket worker Jahmene Douglas. Never knowingly understated, the show managed to drag the naming of the winner out for two full hours. At time it felt more like an endurance event than entertainment.

The finalists performed twice apiece tonight: their “song of the series” and the one that would their winner’s single in the event of victory.

For Douglas, this meant Robbie Williams’ Angels and The Beatles’ Let It Be. Both got his trademark treatment: a slowed-down gospel arrangement, backed by a choir, ending with vocal gymnastics and a sincere, screwed-up face. This lack of versatility and variety might have been an element in his defeat. There was a cynical attempt to make him cry with a montage of messages from his troubled family – all soundtracked by the Forrest Gump music, just to add an extra layer of crassness.

Arthur reprised his rendition of Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On, before clinching victory with Impossible by Barbadian r’n’b artist Shontelle – a canny song choice which got a rapturous reception inside the arena. Upon the announcement of his name, after the now standard preposterously long pause, Arthur could barely speak and admirably refused to play the grateful game. He didn’t even look terribly happy about it. His victory is an X Factor first, in that he’s the first winner to have previously appeared in the bottom two and had to sing for survival. Douglas was sweetly gracious in defeat.

I just hope no supermarket staff or bedsit-dwellers were watching. The fact that Douglas was “saved from his job at Asda” and Arthur “rescued from his bedsit” became a gratingly recurring theme.

Guest performances helped pad out this bloated episode. X Factor alumni One Direction showed what a slick, stadium-filling boyband they’ve become, despite microphone problems for the second night running. Emeli Sande has been overexposed this year and almost apologetically plodded through a dull dirge at the piano.

Rihanna also seemed to have caught a dose of the Jahmene Douglas Disease, dressing uncharacteristically demurely for stripped-back ballad Stay. Eventually, she segued into club anthem We Found Love and the arena erupted with relief.

There were copious montages and recaps, which screamed “filler” a tad too explicitly. The hopefuls eliminated during the live shows returned for a group performance, massacring an impressive number of Christmas songs during a medley. The robbed Ella Henderson oozed class, while joke contestant Rylan Clark arrived on a hunk-drawn sleigh. Only three acts were absent: boy-girl duo MK1, impish folkstress Lucy Spraggan and third-placed Christopher Maloney, who was eliminated last night. There were reports of him reacting badly backstage and he seems to have been erased from X Factor history already.

Behind the judges’ table, Nicole Scherzinger was the winner – both literally, as both finalists were in her category, and figuratively, because she’s been the breakout star of the panel. Tonight she wept over Douglas (calling him “her angel, a beacon of light”) and described her experience this series as “fantasmic, jah-jazzled, shamazeballs all over the place and in your face”. Which was nice, if nonsensical.

Her three fellow judges seemed like spare parts in the Sherzy Show. Gary Barlow had had a shave and short back-and-sides since last night. Louis Walsh trotted out talent show clichés as if he was ticking them off a list. Tulisa Contostavlos made an excruciatingly embarrassing speech to Arthur, telling him, “I get you. We’re the same people. You’re an inspirer.” This was hopefully her last appearance as a judge and what a load of disjointed babble with which to bow out.

At times, this endless episode seemed like a telethon or charity gala, stringing together endless single-song performances with pyrotechnics, ad breaks and bombast. Simon Cowell would surely have milked the Jahmene-versus-James human drama more.

Still, at least the true talent came through to win. Cowell and co can now lick their wounds, regroup and work out how to reinvigorate the franchise with its credibility intact. Well, relatively.